Data in a Round World: Why Geopolitics (Still) Matters for Web

In the early days of what is now a well-worn cliché -- the Information Technology Revolution -- Thomas Friedman toured the world writing about how data and its handlers (mostly in India, though not always) would triumph over pesky differences of borders, social and linguistic differences to make the world a truly Flat One, a case he made rather strongly. In Friedman's world, geopolitics will, inter alia, be a relic of the past, practiced by stodgy wonks not sufficiently clued in. Friedman's mantra became such a pervasive one that the business strategist Pankaj Ghemawat almost always brings up a point in an interview from that era with an Indian TV journalist where she asked -- in all credulity -- whether Ghemawat (whose research on globalization is a sobering account of what it is still not) still believed in a "Round World."

Turkey blocks Twitter after PM's threat to 'wipe out' service

ANKARA, Turkey: Twitter went dark in Turkey late Thursday, just hours after Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened to “wipe out” the social network which, along with others, was highlighting corruption allegations against his inner circle.

The Future of Internet Freedom: We have the technology to defeat censorship. But do we have the will?

By ERIC E. SCHMIDT and JARED COHENMARCH 

Credit Dan Stafford

OVER the next decade, approximately five billion people will become connected to the Internet. The biggest increases will be in societies that, according to the human rights group Freedom House, are severely censored: places where clicking on an objectionable article can get your entire extended family thrown in prison, or worse. 

Google and Yahoo furious at reports NSA secretly taps data centres

Google said in a statement: 'We have long been concerned about the possibility of this kind of snooping.' Photograph: Walter Bieri/AP

Google and Yahoo, two of the world's biggest tech companies, reacted angrily to a report on Wednesday that the National Security Agency has secretly intercepted the main communication links that carry their users' data around the world.

Researchers Draw Romantic Insights From Maps of Facebook Networks

It’s not in the stars after all. Instead, it seems, the shape of a person’s social network is a powerful signal that can identify one’s spouse or romantic partner — and even if a relationship is likely to break up.

One Map With Each Country's Favorite Website

The world’s most popular websites, old timey map-style (Graham and De Stabbata)

 

Two researchers, Mark Graham and Stefano De Stabbata, at the Oxford Internet Institute have depicted the world’s “Internet empires” in a map, below. The map shows each nation’s most popular website, with the size of nations altered to reflect the number of Internet users there.

Το δικό της δίκτυο ίντερνετ σχεδιάζει η Google

Το δικό της ασύρματο δίκτυο ίντερνετ σχεδιάζει να δημιουργήσει στις αναδυόμενες αγορές η Google, όπως αποκαλύπτει η Wall Street Journal. 

Το δωρεάν ψηφιακό πανεπιστήμιο είναι εδώ, λέει ο ιδρυτής της Wikipedia

Ο 47χρονος Αμερικανός Τζίμι Γουέιλς, που το 2001 δημιούργησε στο διαδίκτυο την Wikipedia

Η βαρετή πανεπιστημιακή διάλεξη θα αποτελέσει το πρώτο «θύμα» από την ραγδαία άνοδο της δωρεάν διαδικτυακής εκπαίδευσης, σύμφωνα με τον ιδρυτή της Wikipedia, Τζίμι Γουέιλς

ΛΟΝΔΙΝΟ

«Αν τα πανεπιστήμια δεν απαντήσουν στην αύξηση των διαδικτυακών μαθημάτων με κάποιο πειστικό τρόπο, τότε θα εμφανιστούν νέοι παίκτες που θα τα αντικαταστήσουν», θεωρεί ο 47χρονος Αμερικανός ακτιβιστής και πρώην χρηματιστής που έγινε γνωστός ως ο βασικός συνδημιουργός της δημοφιλέστερης ανοικτής εγκυκλοπαίδειας στο ίντερνετ.

Dutch Man Said to Be Held in Powerful Internet Attack

Dutch authorities say police officials in Spain have arrested a man believed to be connected to an online attack on a spam-fighting site that snarled the Internet last month.

While the authorities did not give the full name of the man in a statement published on a Dutch government Web site, they identified him as “S.K.” A source close to the investigation, who was not authorized to speak publicly, confirmed that the arrested man was Sven Olaf Kamphuis, a 35-year-old Dutch man who has been the spokesman of a group that was protesting a European antispam group’s tactics.

Απόρριψη αγωγής της Viancom κατά YouTube για προσβολή πνευματικών δικαιωμάτων

Υπέρ της Google αποφάνθηκε ομοσπονδιακό δικαστήριο στις Ηνωμένες Πολιτείες σε διαμάχη της εταιρείας με την Viancom για προσβολή πνευματικών δικαιωμάτων. Η εταιρεία είχε ασκήσει αγωγή κατά της Google το 2007 με αφορμή την δημοσιοποίηση στην υπηρεσία YouTube αποσπασμάτων από τις σειρές “South Park”, “Spongebob Squarepants” καθώς και από άλλα προγράμματα χωρίς τη σχετική άδεια.

Facebook Asking Some Users To Upload Government Issued IDs

Facebook on Thursday began asking certain popular users to upload photos of their government issued identification cards to help the social network test a new accounts verification service, the social network confirmed to TPM.

Why Google - not Facebook - will Build the Database of Affinity

Recently we described an idea called the database of affinity: A catalogue of people’s tastes and preferences collected by observing their social behaviors on sites like Facebook and Twitter. Why are we so excited about this idea? Because if Facebook or Twitter or some other company can effectively harness the data from all the likes and shares and votes and reviews they record, they could bring untold rigor, discipline, and success to brand advertising.

Nate Elliott

But exploiting the database of affinity won’t be easy. Any company hoping to turn affinity data into something marketers can use will need three things:

Οι δίδυμοι που έχασαν το Facebook μέσα από τα χέρια τους, είναι εκατομμυριούχοι του bitcoin

Τα δίδυμα αδέρφια Winklevoss, ο Cameron και ο Tyler, είναι ίσως οι διασημότεροι “κακοί” της Silicon Valley. Οι δύο κωπηλάτες, που μάλιστα έχουν φτάσει ακόμα και στους Ολυμπιακούς Αγώνες, ισχυρίστηκαν ότι ο Mark Zuckerberg τους έκλεψε την ιδέα για το Facebook όταν όλοι τους ήταν φοιτητές στο Χάρβαρντ.

Bitcoin bubble may have burst

Trading in Bitcoins on Mt.Gox since Wednesday.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

The price of Bitcoins has plunged more than 75% in the past two days, sparking a rush of activity that overwhelmed trading platforms and suggested the bubble in the virtual currency has burst.

The Digital Universe in 2020: Big Data, Bigger Digital Shadows, and Biggest Growth in the Far East

Welcome to the “digital universe” — a measure of all the digital data created, replicated, and consumed in a single year. It’s also a projection of the size of that universe to the end of the decade. The digital universe is made up of images and videos on mobile phones uploaded to YouTube, digital movies populating the pixels of our high-definition TVs, banking data swiped in an ATM, security footage at airports and major events such as the Olympic Games, subatomic collisions recorded by the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, transponders recording highway tolls, voice calls zipping through digital phone lines, and texting as a widespread means of communications.

How Facebook uses numbers to show people, places and things with Graph Search

Facebook released more details about the technical underpinnings of its Graph Search function. The company’s engineers still appear to have plenty more work ahead to improve Graph Search, though.

Facebook engineers posted more details Wednesday on the back end of its Graph Search function, showing how the social network assigns numbers to users, places and other reference points and then lets users form queries and find answers using those numbers.

Augmented Technological Revolution and International Relations

BRETT DANIEL SHEHADEY

The Information Revolution is quickly transitioning into an Augmented Technological Revolution. The previous ways that humanity interfaces with the world are being replaced with revolutionary mobile platforms. This has profound implications for the international system over the next few decades. Both the way it will soon operate and the autonomy of advanced artificial intelligence will create new dimensions beyond strictly human interactions.

Έρχεται, η Μαύρη Δευτέρα του Internet

Από την επόμενη εβδομάδα, οι περισσότεροι χρήστες του Διαδικτύου στις ΗΠΑ θα υπόκεινται σε ένα νέο σύστημα επιβολής πνευματικών δικαιωμάτων που θα μπορούσε να τους αναγκάσει (ως τιμωρία) να ολοκληρώσουν κάποια εκπαιδευτικά προγράμματα, και ακόμη και να τους μειώσει τις ταχύτητες σύνδεσής τους στο Διαδίκτυο σε σημείο που να είναι πολύ αργές.

'Google for spies' software mines social networks and is likely to be used by governments

Raytheon's Riot software sifts through data from suspects' online accounts

• Critics say it will be used for monitoring citizens' online lives
• Similar to Geotime software bought by London's Met police two years ago

By DAMIEN GAYLE

New software which mines data from social networks to track people's movements and even predict future behaviour poses a 'very real threat to personal freedom', civil rights groups warned today.

Multinational defence contractor Raytheon has developed the 'extreme-scale analytics' software which can sift through vast quantities of data from services like Facebook, Twitter and Google.

Critics have already dubbed it a 'Google for spies' and say it is likely to be used by governments as a means of monitoring and tracking people online to detect signs of dissent.

'Google for spies': A screengrab of a video demonstrating Raytheon's Riot software, which mines the personal data from social networking websites to track people's movements and even predict their future behaviour

The secret to tackling mobile, cloud and big data? Treat them as one.

It’s no secret that mobile, big data and cloud computing are transforming IT. Sanjay Poonen, president of SAP’s mobile division, says companies need a single unified strategy to tackle them, not three separate ones.

There is widespread agreement—across the globe and in every industry—that mobile, big data, and cloud computing are the three cornerstone issues of tomorrow’s business environment. In fact, a strong organizational response to each of these issues is already critical to competitive survival.